Cranking Up The Old Incubator

Good Monday to y'all folks out there in the world. :) We are having a fine sunny day cranking up around here. Going to be some nice warm temperatures this week. Close to 70 Wednesday and Thursday.

The other day I posted a new picture of Rusty. Here is a picture I took this morning of Ruby and Rudy. All three of my babies are growing up. They sure did help me get through the winter months. I am glad I hatched them.

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This past weekend was a great one. Saturday it was really brutally cold, but we spent it at Fernbank Museum...so winter could blast away...we were indoors.

With the flexibility of Shelby being homeschooled we will often go places like the museum during the week. With Ian starting to take whole weekends off..we are out there with all the other folks...the crowds.

Not being used to this, we found the people all around us to be somewhat uncomfortable, but it wasnt as bad as you would think. Believe it or not, there were a lot of children there with their parents, and the children seemed very well behaved, young and old alike. I guess if you have a wild child you know not to take them to a museum. It would be like taking a bull into a china shop! We had a good time anyway.

Making our way home I needed to stop at Tractor Supply to get feed for the animals. We started to stop at the one in Hiram...but decided to go eat supper at Fuddruckers in Rome, so went on to that TSC in Rome instead. That one is better anyway. The one in Hiram tends to be slack. No one asks if you need help getting all those bags of feed out into the truck. Someone always is willing to help at the one in Rome. This time Ian was with me, so he did the hard work of lifting all those 50 pounds bags into the truck for me.

They had three baby ducks left. They had a lot of white bunnies for sale too. Shelby is really good with rabbits. She has three now. She wanted another, but said she would wait until Tyler passed on to get anymore. What a sensible girl she is. She said three was enough responsibility. She has been so good about taking those three out onto the grass on the nicer days. They have been out three times this past week.

They also had some leftover chicks...just the cornish rocks it looked like. They were yellow chicks...so they were either leghorns or rocks. The yellow chicks will be white when grown.

I told the boy at the check out in Rome the story about the young girl at the one in Hiram. He was not too proud to admit that he didnt know the terms and differences either, but that he was willing to learn.

So right there he asked me the terms and I told him what they were. He admitted that he didnt know what a pullet was.

So I told him these things:

A pullet is any female chicken under a year old.

A cockeral is any male chicken under a year old.

A bantam (he didnt know this either, he asked if that meant a 'fixed' hen or rooster) is a small breed of chicken.

He asked me if I could tell a male from a female when they were day old chicks. I told him the truth...NO. LOL I told him it was hard for the untrained eye to know.

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Sunday I spent the better part of the day outside. Cleaning waterers, filling feeders and waterers. Making minor repairs on some of the pens. I moved the Golden Phoenix Pen. Ian had decided to let the pool pump stay open and so when it overfills it drains. Their pen is close to the pump...and has become a terrible muddy mess in there. So they are moved to a dry grassy area. I had to make some repairs once it was moved. When a pen sits in one place for a long time the grass and dirt end up covering a lot of the wooden frame along the bottom. Its not a bad thing as it keeps the pen anchored in some of the high winds that we can get out here. Not so good if you want to move the pen. I got it out without too much trouble and made some minor repairs on it. Good as new now. Oh their legs are looking better after three treatments of mineral oil now. It is just going to take time and keeping on top of the treatments and they will heal up and be fine eventually.

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Now...I did have a header up there that spoke of the incubator didnt I?

Yesterday I found two of my Serama hens sitting on a pile of eggs. I took them all. They wre all quite nasty with mud crusted on them. I took three from the other pen of smaller Serama also, not being sat on.

I took all the nasty eggs in and candled them all (put a flashlight to the egg while in the dark) and out of about 12 eggs there were two that were already growing. You could see the little dark floaty spot in there...that will be the eye eventually...floating around...everything swimming to and fro in there.

Well that was as good an excuse as any to get down the incubator and get those little ones in there and finish them up growing.

 

 

 

 

 

So here I go...time to start hatching babies! On the front row are the two I cleaned up (I was taking a chance doing this because it removes the protective layer that keeps bacteria out of the egg...but you should have SEEN them...ugh. I couldnt put those in there with the other eggs like that)

The second row are the eggs I picked up from the smaller Serama. I only have the one hen now...and I thought maybe I should go ahead and hatch some more from them.

The one egg alone is the one Polish egg I have gotten from Kuckoo and Coco.

The last row are the eggs I have been saving for days now from the Sultans. I will really be surprised if any of these are fertile as everytime I have ever seen Rod or the other male trying to mate the two girls it looks off the mark to me. We will see.

I will continue collecting eggs from everyone and keep on hatching til I have had enough. I feel a long hatch season coming on. ;)

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One more note of good news. It has been seven days since the last bait was taken. I think all the predators that knew about this food source are gone. Thank goodness.